Page 22 of My Three Billionaire Rockstars

It’s incredible.

Xander notices before I can hide it. “Told you.”

I glare at him. “You can shut up.”

“No.”

The answer comes so easily that I laugh.

His eyes narrow on my face at the sound of it, and for one brief second, I wish I could take it back, not because I mind laughing, but because I mind him looking at me like that because of it. Like he’s accomplished something.

“So,” I say, because I need to redirect this entire evening before I accidentally have a feeling, “what exactly do you do at the label?”

His knife pauses against the plate. “Everything.”

“That sounds weird.”

“It’s not.”

“You’ve got to stop answering questions like a man in witness protection.”

He cuts another piece of steak. “I handle the business side. Strategy. Direction. Anything worth doing correctly.”

“Wow,” I say flatly. “Humility, too.”

“I didn’t say I was easy,” he says.

“No, that part is obvious.”

He keeps eating, then says, “What would you do?”

I blink. “With what?”

“The label.”

I lean back, suspicious. “Why?”

“Because I’m asking.”

Instead, because I’m tired and curious and apparently still a little stuck on the PR degree I studied for, even if it got me nowhere, I say, “You want the town’s support, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You won’t get it by acting like a bunch of rich men who rolled in to build a secret empire behind gates.”

“We’re not.”

“That’s how it looks.”

His eyes stay on me. “Go on.”

“You need people to feel included,” I say. “Or at least not displaced. Right now, everybody’s curious, which is fine, but curiosity turns into resentment fast in small towns if people think change is happening to them instead of around them.”

He doesn’t interrupt.

“You’ll need the support of a local business. Someone people trust. Some kind of event early on that doesn’t feel slick or performative. Something that says this place isn’t here to swallow the town whole.”

There’s a little silence after I finish.